NBA: Tanking a season won’t guarantee championships

Many fans are rooting for the Celtics to tank the season so they can win the NBA lottery to help them eventually earn another championship.

There's only one problem with that strategy — it doesn't work, at least not often enough to make intentionally suffering through a miserable season worth it.

No team has won an NBA title after landing the top pick in the draft since the San Antonio Spurs took Tim Duncan No. 1 in 1997. That was 16 years ago and there were unusual circumstances. The Spurs won 62 and 59 games the previous two seasons, but plummeted to 20-62 in 1996-97 due to injuries. Future Hall of Fame center David Robinson broke his foot after six games and missed the rest of the season. Sean Elliott, who averaged 20 points a game the previous season, sat out 43 games with tendinitis in his right knee. Chuck Person missed the entire season following back surgery and Charles Smith played only 17 games because of an arthritic right knee. All four ranked among the team's top six scorers the previous year.

After stumbling to a 3-15 start, the Spurs told Robinson to take his time returning and they won the lottery despite finishing with only the third-worst record in the league.

Behind Robinson and Duncan, the Spurs captured championships in 1999 and 2003, and Duncan led them to two more in 2005 and 2007 after Robinson retired.

Since 1997, no other NBA team has gone on to win a title at any point after making the top pick in the draft. Two teams have gone on to reach the NBA Finals, but lost in them. The Nets reached the finals in 2002 and 2003 after selecting Kenyon Martin with the top pick in 2000 and Cleveland reached the finals in 2007 after taking LeBron James first in 2003.

Reaching the finals and losing in them doesn't cut it in Boston. Only winning it all does for the franchise with a record 17 NBA championships. They didn't start up the Duck Boats when the Celtics took the Lakers to seven games in the NBA Finals in 2010.

Dwight Howard, Derrick Rose and Blake Griffin are All-Stars, but haven't led their teams to the promised land. Orlando never advanced to the finals after taking Howard No. 1 in 2004. The Bulls have not reached the finals despite taking Rose No. 1 in 2008. The Clippers have won only one playoff series since taking Griffin No. 1 in 2009. Even Kevin Durant, the No. 2 pick in 2008 and considered by many to be the NBA's best player after James, hasn't led his Thunder to a title.

Cleveland, New Orleans and Washington won the last three lotteries, but each of them won less than 30 games last season. Cleveland expects to be improved this season after winning the lottery for the second time in three seasons and drafting Anthony Bennett, a 6-foot-8 forward from Canada via UNLV, to go with Kyrie Irving from 2011, but Bennett showed nothing early on, making only 1 of 20 shots and averaging 0.8 points and 0.8 rebounds in his first six games.

Fans rooting for the Celtics to win the lottery fear that without doing so the Green will be relegated to years of mediocrity — finishing seventh or eighth and losing in the opening round of the playoffs or missing the playoffs but not finishing with a bad enough record to claim one of the top draft picks.

The Milwaukee Bucks seem to be the most often cited example of such a team, but there's a flaw in that argument. Milwaukee actually won the lottery in 2005 and drafted center Andrew Bogut with the top pick, but the Bucks continued to lose. Milwaukee hasn't won a playoff series since 2001 and has posted only one winning season, 46-36 in 2009-10, in the last decade.

Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins, another 6-8 forward from Canada, is supposed to be a sure thing as the No. 1 pick in 2014, but the only sure things as No. 1 picks over the last 21 years were manchild LeBron James in 2003 and behemoth Shaquille O'Neal in 1992. Wiggins is only 18 years old. Even though he was pictured on the cover of ESPN the Magazine, it's too early to tell if he can be a savior for an NBA team. Wiggins will score for Kansas only if Worcester's Naadir Tharpe, the Jayhawks point guard, gets him the ball.

The 2014 draft is supposed to be deep with lots of teams also high on Kentucky power forward Julius Randle, Duke small forward Jabari Parker, Oklahoma State point guard Marcus Smart and Arizona power forward Aaron Gordon among others. So the Celtics don't need to win the lottery to get a good player.

Although they won't admit it, the Celtics have tried tanking at least twice to improve their draft position, but neither time worked out as planned. In 1997, M.L. Carr's Celtics finished 15-67, the NBA's second-worst record and had acquired another lottery pick so they had the best odds (36 percent) of winning the lottery. Rick Pitino felt so confident of landing Duncan, he left Kentucky to coach the Celtics, but the Green ended up with the third and sixth picks, took Chauncey Billups and Ron Mercer, and Pitino resigned under fire a few years later.

In 2007, the Celtics again liked their chances of winning the lottery after finishing with the league's second-worst record, but they ended up with the fifth pick. The Celtics dealt that pick, Jeff Green, to Seattle with Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak for Ray Allen and Glen Davis. Then the Celtics acquired Kevin Garnett from Minnesota for Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Al Jefferson, Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff and a 2009 first-round pick. Garnett and Allen helped the Celtics win the title in 2008.

Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge deserves credit for accumulating the talent that he shipped to Seattle and Minnesota to make those deals possible, but Jeff Green was the only high Boston draft pick. Jefferson was chosen 15th, Gerald Green 18th, West 24th and Gomes 50th. You don't need to tank games to draft in those spots. So far this season, Kelly Olynyk, whom Ainge drafted with the 13th pick last June, has outplayed Bennett, the No. 1 pick. NBA general managers have called Olynyk the steal of the draft so you don't necessarily need a lottery pick to get a player who can help.

The Celtics aren't the only team with an eye on the 2014 draft. Phoenix general manger Ryan McDonough, Ainge's former assistant GM in Boston, could end up with four first-round picks in 2014. Two are protected. Orlando GM Rob Hennigan, a Worcester native, has acquired a pick in 2014 from Denver and others in future years from the 76ers and Lakers.

Of course, finishing with the worst record does not guarantee that a team will end up with the first pick. It almost guarantees that it won't. Over the last 20 years, only twice has the team with the worst record actually won the lottery, when Cleveland took James in 2003 and when Orlando took Howard in 2004.

Ainge insisted he wasn't the anonymous basketball executive who told ESPN.com's Jeff Goodman — a former T&G stringer by the way — that he was trying to lose to increase his team's chances of winning the lottery. At least one of Ainge's decisions seems to indicate otherwise. It made sense to ship Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry to Brooklyn for marginal players the Celtics don't really want and draft picks that they really do desire. But leaving the team without a proven point guard until Rajon Rondo returns has “welcome to the lottery” written all over it.

So what should the game plan be for the Celtics? They should try to win as many games as they can, rebuild with their own draft picks and those they acquired from the Nets and Clippers for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018 with the choice of swapping picks with Brooklyn in 2017, or trade them for proven players.

They also need to sign free agents. A free agent is more apt to come to Boston if he believes he turn them into a title contender. That would be more likely with a Celtics team coming off 35 or 40 victories instead of 15 or 20.

So if the Celtics are given the option to lose on purpose, the answer should be: “No tanks.”